PHILADELPHIA DNA prompts the retrial of death row inmate

If he is exonerated, Yarris will be the first inmate freed from death row by DNA evidence.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Acting on a joint request by prosecutors and defense attorneys, a judge granted a new trial Wednesday to a man who has spent 20 years on death row for a murder that new DNA evidence suggests he didn't commit.
Nicholas Yarris remained locked in the state's maximum security prison after the order by Delaware County Judge William Toal, which fell a step short of exonerating him of the 1981 killing of a 32-year-old Boothwyn woman.
Under an agreement with defense lawyers, prosecutors have 90 days to decide whether to retry Yarris in the death of Linda Mae Craig or free him.
Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green has yet to say whether he believes prosecutors can revive a case dashed by a DNA test, performed in July, that showed that genetic material found under the victim's fingernails, on her undergarments and in a pair of gloves did not belong to Yarris.
After Wednesday's ruling in Media, Pa., Yarris' defense attorneys urged prosecutors to declare him innocent.
"There is no case," federal defender Michael Wiseman said. "Given how weak the case is, he should absolutely be out of prison. He should be a free man."
Prosecutors did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment on Toal's decision.
Complicated case
If he is exonerated, Yarris will be the first death row inmate freed from death row by DNA evidence.
The judge's order could make Yarris eligible for bail, but his path to freedom could be complicated.
While his case was on appeal in 1985, Yarris escaped from sheriff's deputies on a trip to a courthouse and fled to Florida, where he committed several crimes. He was recaptured after 25 days, but his crime spree earned him a 30-year sentence, based in part on his previous conviction for murder.
Yarris has now hired a defense lawyer in Florida in an attempt to get his sentence there reduced to less than the time he has already served, his attorneys said. He would also need a judge to clarify whether he has already served his sentence in Pennsylvania for the escape.
Wiseman said Yarris believes he at least deserves a chance to post bail while prosecutors decide whether to retry him.
"I think he has a very reasonable view of this, which is, he has been exonerated -- why is he still in custody on this case?" Wiseman said.
Original trial
At his first trial, prosecutors told jurors that Yarris kidnapped, raped and murdered Craig -- a stranger -- because she looked like a former girlfriend who had dumped him.
There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, but a prison guard and an inmate testified that Yarris had confessed to the killing while he was jailed awaiting trial in an unrelated assault case.
Yarris later acknowledged that he had told a prison official that he knew something about Craig's death, but maintained that he made up the story in the hopes that the government would give him preferential treatment as a potential witness.
Delaware County Assistant District Attorney Sheldon Kovach has conceded in previous court hearings that the DNA tests showing that a different man raped Craig undermine the government's original theory of how the killing happened. But, he said investigators haven't ruled out the possibility that Yarris was an accomplice of the real killer.